"Be nicer than necessary to everyone you meet. Everyone is fighting some kind of battle."

"I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this?"

"An unconsidered life is not one worth living."

"Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity."

"He who is not contended with what he has would not be contended with what he would like to have."

"Those who are hardest to love need it the most."

"The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, me to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better? Only God knows."

"We cannot live better than in seeking to become better."

"In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep."

"God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us."

"There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse."

"Those who are hardest to love need it the most."

"Man's greatest privilege is the discussion of virtue."

"Beloved Pan and all other gods, who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul, and may the outward and the inner man be at one."

"The answer I gave myself and the oracle was that it was to my advantage to be as I am."

"For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles."

"I neither know nor think that I know"

"Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel."

"Esteemed friend, citizen of Athens, the greatest city in the world, so outstanding in both intelligence and power, aren't you ashamed to care so much to make all the money you can, and to advance your reputation and prestige--while for truth and wisdom and the improvement of your soul you have no care or worry?"

"In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep."